1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a broadband wireless communication system. More particularly, the present invention relates to an apparatus and method for supporting Peer to Peer (P2P) communication between Mobile Stations (MSs) in a broadband wireless communication system.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional MS performs direct communication with a Base Station (BS) using radio resources managed by the BS in a cellular communication system. In other words, to perform mutual communication, two Mobile Stations (MSs) each have to form a connection with a BS and be allocated UpLink (UL) and DownLink (DL) radio resources from the BS. The BS receives data from one MS through a corresponding connection, and transmits the data to the other MS through a separate connection.
A Peer to Peer (P2P) scheme is another scheme for performing mutual communication between two MSs. The P2P is a scheme for forming direct connection to perform communication between the two MSs. In the P2P, the two MSs directly transmit/receive a signal between themselves.
The P2P scheme may increase resource utilization efficiency because a high data rate is obtained in a case where a transmit MS and a receive MS are adjacent to each other. Commonly, a BS provides resource allocation for P2P communication in a legacy system supporting P2P. That is, the legacy system allocates resources through a BS-centralized scheme. In this case, a problem exists in which a large overhead results because a large amount of information may be exchanged between the BS and each MS.
In the BS-centralized P2P resource allocation scheme, a BS should be aware of a channel gain for all P2P communications (or connections) and, in a case of permitting simultaneous transmission, the BS should be aware of interference between all P2P transmissions. Therefore, an overhead resulting from information exchange between the BS and an MS is large. In a case where the BS allocates P2P resources in the BS-centralized scheme as described above, a problem exists in that complexity is large and realization is difficult.
Therefore, a need exists for an apparatus and method for reducing overhead for P2P communication in a wireless communication system.